With her three-year-old son Jack in the house, she says there’s “never a dull moment”.

Little Jack, who is currently toilet training, came home from preschool last Monday and told his mum he was going to use the loo.

Within a few minutes, he emerged from the bathroom with the travel-sized toilet training seat wedged down over his head.

“It was quite the event, one for the memory box,” she tells Independent.ie.

“He came home on Monday, went into the loo, next thing he calls me to say he’s stuck. And I go into him and he has a toilet training seat over his head, and onto his neck like a necklace.”

“I have no idea how he managed to do it. He’s a bit of a monkey, that’s his personality, he thought this was hilarious.”

“I went to grab the camera not thinking that it wasn’t going to come off. We took a picture and had a giggle and then we set about taking it off, but it wasn’t coming off.”

“You couldn’t make it up, I was trying to use water and oil and even a scissors to cut it off, but it was hard plastic. It wasn’t coming off, he was getting red marks round his neck.”

“It was like a comedy sketch, there we were on a Monday at lunch time, you don’t expect to be doing this.”

Caroline sent the photo of Jack to some of her friends to see if they could help find a solution. Eventually, she settled on bringing Jack to a local fire station.

“It wasn’t an emergency but at the same time it was quite clear that I wasn’t getting it off, he had red marks on his neck.”

“We rang the fire service and they said to go to the Cork station or the Ballyvolane station as a walk-in thing.”

“He had to collect his brother from school and he was sitting in the back seat with the toilet seat on his head, and then off we went up to Ballyvolane up to the fire station.”

“I really did feel a bit embarrassed at this stage, like a numpty is what I’d call it. These guys are doing serious work and then I‘ve a three-year-old in the car with a toilet seat on his head. But they were all dads with young kids; it was the first time they’d ever seen something like it.”

While the fire officers used a cutter to break the seat, they played ‘Fireman Sam’ for Jack on their phones.

“He was a bit afraid that he wasn’t going to get it off his head, this is what was going on in his three-year-old head. The whole time he was going around trying to get it off. And then I told him, oh the fireman will get it off.”

“They were really good, they put Fireman Sam on the phone for him, and even when it was off, they gave us a tour of the fire station allowing him to try on the helmets.”